For the purposes of this invention, the terms “biobased”, “biobased content”, and “bio-content” are used interchangeably to describe carbon atoms from biological sources, recycled sources, renewable sources, and/or otherwise sustainable sources. Carbon atoms are fundamental building blocks for many manufactured materials. Introducing biobased carbons into manufactured materials may have positive environmental effects.
The term “carbonylation” generally refers to chemical reactions that introduce carbon monoxide molecules into other organic and inorganic substrate molecules. Carbonylation results in a substrate molecule gaining a carbonyl functional group. Carbonylation reactions are important in industrial chemistry and are becoming a more important building block for fine and bulk chemicals. Conventional processes use homogenous catalysts for the carbonylation of epoxides to produce beta-lactones similar to the following reaction:

A catalyst comprises one or more atoms which may alter the rate chemical reactions and/or provide an alternative mechanism for a chemical reaction with a different transition state and/or activation energy. A homogenous catalyst, includes an atom, ion, or molecule with a particular function that is in the same phase as the reagents of a chemical reaction.
Conventional processes for carbonylation of epoxides to produce beta-lactones using homogenous catalysts may have costs associated with catalysts recycle and material recovery that could be reduced or eliminated using heterogenous catalyst systems. Certain conventional processes require the use of homogenous catalyst in a solvent. In order to reuse the catalyst, the catalyst in solvent must be passed through expensive membranes to recycle the catalyst. Conventional homogenous processes may involve the use of large volumes of solvent, hence requiring larger capacity reactors which result in higher costs associated with the size of the reactors and higher costs associated with moving large volumes of solvent through the system. Also, the processes including solvent usually require distillation resulting in extra costs associated with heating and distillation equipment.
There is a need for less costly and more efficient processes for producing beta-lactones and beta-lactone derivatives by carbonylation of epoxides with carbon monoxide. The present invention satisfies this need with processes for carbonylation of epoxides with carbon monoxide using heterogenous catalysts.